New Community Leadership Program by Liferay Rewards Community Members

Liferay, an enterprise open source portal and collaboration vendor, has recently announced a new Community Leadership Program. This specially designed program is aimed at providing supplementary input into product directions and community affairs to its 35,000- member open source community.

“Our community has been active since 2000 and is one of the most dedicated and vibrant in the open source world,” said James Falkner, Liferay’s community manager, who spearheaded the program. “This program identifies existing leaders, fosters growth of new leaders, and gives them the opportunity to participate in product development and thought leadership.

A rich and multifarious group of developers, encompassing users and partners to hobbyists and software architects, has formed this dynamic leadership team. Veteran contributors, possessing technological acumen, will serve as mentors to relatively green community members.

“I have been a big fan of Liferay technology for a long time and appreciate how the company continues to keep its community open and inviting for everyone,” said Bendiabdallah Yousri, a JEE expert at SQLI Company, and one of Liferay’s newest Community Leaders. “This openness is a big part of what keeps me excited about Liferay—the opportunity to participate makes me want to help evolve the technology.

Besides having their say in product roadmap decisions, community members will acquire a new Community Verifier status in Liferay’s issue tracking system. This status will empower them to lead other community members in issue reporting, tracking, and resolution. Given the dynamic scenario of the IT industry, Liferay is anticipating adding some more features to this program, which will further strengthen the growing Liferay open community, open source team.

In other news, Liferay recently announced community, fiscal and market share growth for 2010 as well as upcoming strategies for expanding the community and eco-system in 2011. A major initiative in 2011 is the Liferay Marketplace, an online space for buying and selling modules and solutions that leverages Liferay as a strategic web platform for web sites, applications, and solutions specific to several key industries.